Spring Update, Fundraiser Garage Sale, Stop the Cuts and More

Posted by The Stand Community Organizing Centre | June 06, 2017

Garage Sale & BBQ Fundraiser for The Stand

Saturday, June 10, 9:30 - 3:00

The Saskatchewan Eco Network (SEN) is joining The Stand community! To celebrate and to raise funds for The Stand, we’re co-hosting a Garage Sale and BBQ in the parking lot at St. Joseph's Parish on the corner of Broadway and 8th St. East.

Have some items to donate to the fundraiser? Email organize@thestandcentre.ca or call Doug at (306) 244-3082.

**Please note, this event is weather permitting and will be postponed if it is raining or ridiculously windy.

What's Up at the Stand?

As you likely know, the recent provincial budget introduced dozens of cuts to public services and legislation has been passed allowing the privatization and elimination of Crown corporations such as the STC Bus Company, the Saskatchewan Grain Car Corporation, SaskTel, and SGI to name a few. The budget represents the most significant assault on public services in a generation.

Community groups have not taken this lying down. Immediately following the budget announcement, our phone began ringing and email inbox filled up with requests for use of the Stand’s space and services as community members gathered to plan ways to push back against the government’s austerity agenda.

The Stand has become a key resource for this growing movement, hosting a series of organizing meeting beginning the day after the budget announcement. The space has been used to plan protests, gather people to write letters to their MLAs, host petitions and distribute information, hold press conferences, host sign-making workshops, send out press releases, and generally become a go-to place for all things protest-related. Those of us around the space have joked that we should change our name to "Protest Depot."

We have also lent our equipment, shared our knowledge, and played a key role in organizing coalition meetings. Our website has also been used to host the new www.StopTheCutsSK.ca website, a central online location for information and resources for the Stop the Cuts movement.

In short, the Stand is growing into the hub of grassroots organizing that we dreamed of.

In addition to these activities we have hosted two university classes in our board room, a poetry reading with Marilyn Dumont, and provided space for meetings for multiple community groups, as well as our own communications, programming, and community engagement working groups.

We've done all of this with no paid staff and limited financial resources from rental income and about a dozen monthly sustainer donors. We are thoroughly impressed and heartened by the efforts we are seeing from volunteers and activists. However, we can also see gaps that need to be filled to more effectively coordinate communication among various, recruit and support the involvement of new activists, and mobilize strategic and effective actions. Through The Stand, the Treaty 6 Justice Collective will continue working to fill these gaps to strengthen our collective efforts and impact.

We are building chapters in different regions of the province which we will be gathering to form a province-wide organization in the coming weeks. We have already organized dozens of events and are planning many more.

In Saskatoon, coalition meetings happen every second Thursday at 7pm at Third Avenue United Church. The next meeting will be on June 8th.